Your Saturday Trump Dump

I have twelve minutes before I have to leave for a dinner engagement. Let's see how many links I can get up here in that time…

  • Did Trump really promise "100%" that he'd testify under oath against James Comey? That's what the headlines say but Andrew Prokop says it's not that clear. Also, take note of this nice bit of evasion: Asked if there were tapes, he said, "I'll tell you about that over a very short period of time" and "You're gonna be very disappointed when you hear the answer."
  • You know that defense that some of Trump's allies are using; that he's new at the job and any rules he's breaking are just because he doesn't know better? That might fly if we'd hired a new janitor and he hasn't learned yet that whether styrofoam goes in the recycling bin or not…but this is the Presidency of the United States we're talking about. Fred Kaplan thinks that excuse is pretty terrifying, maybe worse than if they just admitted he's a criminal.
  • Eric Levitz lists some pretty awful things Trump did lately, some of which are getting crowded out of the headlines by the other awful things he's done.
  • Benjamin Wallace-Wells on the problems the White House is having in its mission to discredit James Comey.  For one thing, I think Trump has way overused the argument that any news item that isn't totally favorable to him is Fake News.  Even folks who want to believe in him are going to stop believing that about everything.

That's all I have time for. I thought Bill Maher did a good job of defusing the controversy about "that word" and apologizing with good sincerity. The folks who wanted him off the air anyway won't back down but I don't think this scandal has much more mileage in it. Then again, I didn't think it was that big a deal in the first place.